Surrender to Sabbath Rest
Vincent van Gogh. The Siesta (1890). Public domain.
God gives rest to his loved ones.
—Psalm 127:2
Before God ever issued his Mt. Sinai commandments, He was actively teaching His people about Sabbath rest and about trust. When God embarked on His mission to rescue the Israelite slaves from Egypt, He introduced Himself as I AM, the God of their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He proceeded to show His supreme power by decimating the Egyptian gods in a showdown of plagues and then destroying Pharoah and his army in the Red Sea while the newly rescued slaves watched in wonder. And yet the Israelites continually doubted God’s care for them. They knew that humans were often casualties of the gods’ selfish whims. How could they know that they wouldn’t ultimately be abandoned—or worse? So God led this fearful, confused horde into the school of the desert to orient them to His ways and what it meant to be His people.
When the Israelites despaired of finding enough food in the barren wasteland, God shared His plan: “Look, I’m going to rain down food from heaven for you. Each day the people can go out and pick up as much food as they need for that day. I will test them in this to see whether or not they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day, they will gather food, and when they prepare it, there will be twice as much as usual” (Ex 16:4-5, NLT). God meant for them to learn that if they would trust Him enough to obey Him, He would always come through.
There were two parts to this rhythm of reliance on God’s provision, one daily and one weekly. The strange manna showed up as promised. But at the beginning of this experiment, many foragers doubted that God meant what He said and gathered more than they needed for the day, only to wake up the next morning to a maggot-infested slop of inedible leftovers. Lesson number one—only gather what you need—check.
But the Israelites were allowed to gather a double portion on the 6th day, eat the leftovers for the 7th day, and somehow the maggots would stay away. Scientifically, of course, this is inexplicable. There’s a British company that claims it can produce manna. They maintain that manna was actually the cocoon of a parasitic beetle that can be found on thorn bushes in the Middle East. The Trehala beetle is highly nutritious, containing large amounts of trehalose and protein. It’s this alimental substance—trehalose—that researchers are harvesting for its remarkable preservative powers and that they suspect kept the Israelites from starving to death. Even if this fascinating suggestion does explain the “food rained down from heaven” phenomena in ways that feel a little less than miraculous, that’s still an enormous amount of cocoons to feed a couple of million hungry Israelites every day for 14,600 days! Not to mention the complete disappearance of all cocoons and maggots each Sabbath day!
That first Sabbath, some stubborn hoarders who woke to find their extra portion had NOT gone bad and would provide sufficient nourishment food for the day, went out into the fields anyway to look for more. The Lord, who of course sees it all, asked Moses, “How long will these people refuse to obey my commands and instructions? They must realize that the Sabbath is the Lord’s gift to you. That is why He gives you a two-day supply on the sixth day, so there will be enough for two days. On the Sabbath day, you must each stay in your place. Do not go out to pick up food on the seventh day” (Ex 16:28-29). So the people stopped gathering on the seventh day and still had enough to eat. Lesson number two—check.
There’s no question that these suddenly nomadic hordes were being forced to learn to depend on God’s provision of daily bread—even on the Sabbath when there was none to be found. This weekly rhythm was meant to embed a profound spiritual truth about their relationship to God and His ability to care for them in any situation, albeit on His terms, not theirs.
Unfortunately, the Israelites were slow to absorb this rhythm as God’s training ground of trust. Their stubborn refusal to recognize that theirs was not only a capable but also a deeply caring God who was inviting them to rest seemed to have been a source of grief and frustration for God. The writer of Hebrews, quoting Psalm 127, recalled the inevitable consequence of the Israelites’ preferred pattern of panic and idol worship when their comfort was threatened:
Remember what it says: “Today when you hear His voice, don’t harden your heart, as Israel did when they rebelled.” And who was it who rebelled against God, even though they heard His voice? Wasn’t it the people Moses led out of Egypt? And who made God angry for forty years? Wasn’t it the people who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? And to whom was God speaking when He took an oath that they would never enter His rest? Wasn’t it the people who disobeyed Him? So we see that because of their unbelief they were not able to enter His rest (Heb 3:15-19 NLT).
These Israelites continually second-guessed God’s motives and refused to obey Him, just as Adam and Eve second-guessed God’s command to not eat from a certain tree in the Garden of Eden. And just as that first couple forfeited their access to Edenic rest, so the Israelites rejected an invitation from God to return to it.
Although God had been patiently coaching His people to trust Him, drilling into their psyche the concept of taking a break every seventh day, He took it up a notch by including Sabbath rest as a central command issued from Mount Sinai, extending it to slaves, animals, and to the land itself. Walter Brueggemann writes in Sabbath as Resistance:
How strange to use the most airtime at the mountain on the Sabbath command. The divine utterance must have come as a shock to the listening Israelites. There had been no Sabbath in Egypt, no work stoppage; no work stoppage for Pharoah who worked day and night to stay atop the pyramid. There had been no work stoppage for the slaves because they had to gather straw during their time off; no work stoppage for anybody in the Egyptian system, because frantic productivity drove the entire system (p. 27).
Yahweh was completely unlike the hyper-driven Pharoah and his self-serving entourage of sub-gods. Every commandment He gifted to His beloved people was meant to bring them into alignment with their proper purpose and function in the world. Sabbath stoppage was a gift of grace that had to be rooted in trust.
The Creator of all humanity was inviting people to experience a way of living that aligned with their actual design, a design that had been thwarted by a human sin pattern of taking rather than receiving. For one thing, He never designed the human body to work without rest. He did not design us to worship idols of productivity and prestige. He did not design us to harm our neighbor in order to try to get the upper hand to some fake happiness. Just as each manna collector ended up with just the right amount for their daily needs, so God will provide each of us with everything we need to live our best lives if we surrender to His methods. It is our desperate and misguided search to take care of ourselves on our own terms that leads to our “frantic productivity” and unnecessary exhaustion.
The situation in Egypt sounds frightfully similar to the working conditions of many in America today. We have chosen to return to this land of slavery, of unending work and pyramid building. A land of work without rest. We have chosen to believe that if we don’t work, we will not have everything we need—not enough money and not enough worth. Interestingly, of all the ten commandments, it is the fourth one especially, the one about Sabbath rest, that most Christians in America regard as irrelevant today. Perhaps we are partly prejudiced against it because of the legalism and hypocrisy so often associated with it. We see it as a law—or perhaps a suggestion—that enslaves rather than frees.
Failing to win His peoples’ trust through the desert and its enforced dependence, God Himself eventually “became flesh and dwelt among us.” He became incarnate in Christ Jesus to demonstrate real-time Sabbath living. He exemplified a life of trusting surrender to the will of the Father. He loved to deliver and heal broken people, especially on the Sabbath (Jn. 5; Mk. 2:23–3:6; Matt. 12; Lk. 6). But instead of delighting in the mighty kindness of God, the new generation of self-righteous law abiders grumbled at His good works, because, well—works! In a complete pendulum swing from their desert ancestors, these Israelites knew better than to ignore the command to cease work on the Sabbath. But now, instead of building Egyptian pyramids, they were building spiritual prisons. They once again completely missed the generous intention of the Sabbath Creator.
When Jesus reminded them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath,” he was channeling His Father’s tender heart. (Mk. 2:27 NLT) In that same spirit, He later lamented, “How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me” (Matt. 23:37 NLT). In their misguided imposition of impossible burdens on the people they were meant to shepherd, these false shepherds once again rebelled against the invitation to rest. They continued to fight for control of their destiny. Furious and broken-hearted, Jesus admonished them, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in” (Matt 23:13 NLT).
Until we believe that God, who possesses perfect wisdom and perfect love, who knows everything about us there is to know and always has our very best interest in mind, whose every command and every invitation is meant to enhance us rather than diminish us, we will continue to suffer fruitless exhaustion. We are often like the tantruming two-year-old who stubbornly refuses a much-needed nap. Instead, consider the Psalmist’s restful surrender, “I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Ps 131:1-2 NLT). The weaned child no longer demands the breast for comfort but is content in the knowledge that its needs will be taken care of.
That first generation of desert-trodding Israelites never did learn the lessons of reliance, to quiet themselves in the arms of their deliverer. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day went to the opposite extreme and made rest an impossible burden. When God Himself came down in the flesh to invite them to embrace His intended lifestyle of Sabbath-inspired trust, they nailed those welcoming, outstretched arms to a tree.
Sabbath rhythms themselves are not the end goal. Rather, they are a means for training us to trust that God really can handle things. We don’t have to handle all the things. The world will keep going if we are not busy spinning it. We must trust Him even in perceived losses, believing that His provision will always be sufficient. And, as the intent has always been, let Sabbath-keeping spill over into a Sabbath lifestyle. Like that exhausted two-year-old who finally surrenders to his mother’s gentle rocking and the embrace of her comforting arms, let us “do our best to enter that rest” (Heb 4:11).
Suggestions for Keeping Sabbath:
“For most of us, Sabbath will not become possible without extensive, regular practice of solitude. That is, we must practice time alone, out of contact with others, in a comfortable setting outdoors or indoors, doing no work. We must not take our work with us, even in the form of bible study, prayer or sermon preparation, for then we will not be alone. An afternoon walking by a stream or on the beach, in the mountains, or sitting in a comfortable room or yard, is a good way to start. This should become a weekly practice. Then perhaps a day, or a day and a night, in a retreat center where we can be alone. Then perhaps a weekend or a week, as wisdom dictates . . .. Accept the grace of doing nothing. Stay with it until you stop jerking and squirming. Solitude well practiced will break the power of busyness, haste, isolation, and loneliness.” —Dallas Willard
“A man who works with his mind should sabbath with his hands, and a man who works with his hands should sabbath with his mind.” —Abraham Herschel
“If you don't take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You're doing too much, you're being too much in charge. You've got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you're not doing anything.” —Eugene Peterson
